Are there Sasquatches near Tumbler Ridge? According to a recent anonymous post over at the Sasquatch Chronicles, yes.
The post was made on August 22, and tells the story of an encounter back in 2006.
According to the person telling the story, who gives his name as John, back in 2006, he watched a group of Sasquatch “rolling rocks in a scree field while working Seismic in a heli-in only area.”
John says he tried to reach out a few years back, “but didn’t want to sound crazy and bailed out. They were at best a half sport field away.”
According to the tale, he was alone trouble shooting a line break. “It was an hour after first light,” writes John. “I was dropped off by a helicopter at first light on a peak of a rolling mountain and was tasked with locating a line break, with little info other than to head downhill until I found it, then reassess. I was equipped with a radio and gps.”
After about an hour of hiking, John says, they came to a massive scree slide area, previously seen from the helicopter ride in. “As I traversed the side hill in an attempt to not have to cross this huge slide using a clear game\deer trail that followed around the rim as the slide area narrowed I could hear in the narrowing slide edge a constant, almost man made sound of rocks rolling. My senses were heightened as initially I thought it was the slide slowly moving or a grizzly bear rolling rocks as I had heard stories of prior.”
Having not seen anything, John readied his radio, as protocol was to call in bear sightings, so that the helicopter pilot could come and scare off the bear.”
But he didn’t make the call. Instead, he slowly snuck towards where they could hear the sound, staying as silent as possible, until they could see what was making the noise, which continued unabated. “Initially I thought bears but almost instantly I knew I wasn’t looking at a bear. Big downward facing head and shoulders, Breasts, long arms, long legs, hunched over, hand pinching things thumb to index like pinching bugs then to mouth.
“As I’m staring at this hairy female where no humans have probably ever been, I see another two small ones, less noticeable in the rocks doing the same action. I watched for a solid three or four minutes. Then from the most narrow edge of the scree field comes a massive female, twice as big easy, same attributes but less athletic and more worn. Head as big as my chest. Bends over and same action, within 20 seconds I hear a small animal squeal and the big female has something in its hand and everyone of them popped up and looked but within one second a massive male breaks the same area where the big female came from right up beside the big female and snatched the whatever rodent from her and immediately ate it. I couldn’t see what it was but he put it in his mouth.
“Without a missed beat (almost immediately) all three larger ones stood up tall and were scanning and sniffing, I pancaked in that moment, pressed my radio n said quietly bear bear bear which is taken very seriously. Within a minute a had a helicopter buzzing my area feet above the trees in a super aggressive manner I watched all five dispatch at the same time I heard the helicopter inbound. They headed down, and I only thought to head back to the helipad. I ran but as quietly as I could. I made it back in about the same time it took me to get down. Once I was on the helicopter I told the pilot what I saw and his neck snapped towards me and said ‘I knew it. I know what I saw, you’re not crazy, we shouldn’t be here. Long story short after that everyone went out in groups.”
While he had a phone with them, it was a crappy LG and would only have shown dark shapes on grey rocks, so John never took a shot.
John appears on the August 23 episode of the podcast, but it is for members only.
This is not the only record of possible Sasquatch activity in the Tumbler Ridge area. In 2001, a family were driving from Grande Prairie to Tumbler Ridge and were taking the Boot Lake road. They pulled over to let the kids pee when the wife noticed some large tracks. “I asked my husband what made those tracks and he thought I was looking at coyote tracks. When I pointed out the large man-like foot prints my husband, three children and myself were all stunned. There were about eight clear, bare-footed foot prints in the light cover of snow in the shallow ditch at the side of the road. My husband tried to match the stide of the prints but fell short by about half. The ninth print went up into the bush were the willows were bent and broken over. We did not have a camera on us and part of us found it hard to believe what we were seeing.”
And even that wasn’t the first report. According to the former (which was reported on the Sasquatch Alberta Website), there were reports of tracks near a gas plant in the same area about ten years prior.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
